A woman without a disability parked in a spot meant for people with disabilities. The disability community puts her on blast for her offensive joke.
You would hope that we’ve reached an age where people would stop punching downward at other folks in a vain attempt at humor. With underprivileged communities being more vocal about how they feel about certain jokes and being made fun of, there’s an undeniable effort being made to discourage this kind of humor from continuing to be the norm. Unfortunately, that reality still eludes our society. After all, prominent comedians like Dave Chappelle continue to flaunt their bigotry as a comedy bit.
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Things aren’t much better among regular folks either. Even without enormous platforms and celebrity status, people still find it in themselves to mock people in other communities and pass it off as less-than-amusing jokes.
On TikTok, the disability community often finds themselves as the target of such humor. In fact, one offensive video in which a woman parks in a spot meant for people with disabilities has been making the rounds. Here’s how the disability community reacted.
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This woman parks in a spot meant for people with disabilities. The disability community responds.
In the original video, which actually appears to no longer be available as of this writing, TikTok user @mrssriracha seems to be really asking to get canceled. She recorded herself having parked her car in a spot meant for people with disabilities, despite seemingly not having one. As she climbed out of her car, she even mocked the way that some people with disabilities walk.
From the get-go, there are plenty of red flags with this video. Not only did she record herself parking in this spot, which is highly illegal without proper identification, but she can even be heard laughing hysterically while climbing out of the car.
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She would later post an “apology” statement following swaths of backlash being left in her comments section. She explained that she uses humor like this as a coping mechanism.
“It’s dark humor,” she tried to profess. “That’s how I cope.”
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In a move that should come as no surprise, the disability community had some words to say about this offensive video and OP’s follow-up. Filmmaker Aubrey Smalls (@aubreysmalls) took to TikTok to directly address the content.
“I just want to know what you’re coping with and what that has to do with disabled people,” Aubrey joked in his video.
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On a more serious note, Aubrey calls this video one of the latest of several videos in which content creators do the exact same thing. They openly take up a parking space for people with disabilities and then take it a step further by mocking the way some of them walk. As far as meme formats go, this is by far one of the worst.
Needless to say, Aubrey wasn’t having any of it. He’s long since grown tired of being the target of ridicule for his own disability.
“I spent so many years just hiding away indoors because I was insecure about being made fun of for the way I walked,” he admitted. “Your body is beautiful no matter what.”
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And of course, Aubrey wasn’t the only TikToker upset at this video. @TizzyEnt spoke at length about OP’s “dark humor” comment:
“If you were a disabled person who’s making jokes about your [own] disability, one could argue that you were using dark humor to cope. But you’re not disabled and you ain’t coping with s—. You were just being s—– about people who are disabled.”
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As of this writing, however, it would appear as if we may not have to worry about OP posting any more videos like this. Her TikTok seems to have been deleted with the original video and her “apology” having been scrubbed from the internet. However, people have still been able to stitch the footage in an effort to educate her and others on how to address the disability community.
Let’s make something clear. “Dark humor” doesn’t refer to mocking underprivileged communities for TikTok likes. You’re just being mean, plain and simple.
Source: https://www.distractify.com/p/woman-parks-spot-people-with-disabilities
